“Alternate past” is probably the least headache-inducing.

I think the consensus is that the paradox pokemon are imagined creatures brought to life.

But that's not what time machines do.

No, but part of theory I've also seen, is was never actually a 'time machine' at all, just seemed that way. not truly taking from past/future, but thoughts of what was like... the Professor(s) just never realized that was what was *actually* going on and assumed was real time travel

I feel like when you get to the point where you're deciding that something isn't what it's outright claimed to be, that's when you're overthinking it for the sake of overthinking it.

In the game where the past pokemon show up, there is a magazine in the school talking about some of their appearances (before they were even seen), and the future pokemon traded in have dex entries saying they look like they came out of a non-reputable magazine. With all this supposedly being before any of these species were discovered. And vice versa in the game where the future pokemon appear.

Arven specifically points out the inconsistency of the researchers finding the paradox donphan long before the “time machine” was built. This isn’t a fan contrivance, it’s practically laid out for us in the game that not all is what it seems.

Unless the source of the time machine's power is in Area Zero, and that source predates the machine, and is ergo how those Pokemon wound up there. The time machine could therefore just be a means of people being able to control that gateway.

Replace “gateway” with “production”/“manifestation” and you have the current working theory for the imagination idea. Sticking to the time travel concept just leads to paradoxes like you pointed out. It’s pretty clear to me that the time travel explanation is only surface-deep. Dig any deeper and they’re practically shouting that it’s not real.

I don't see how. Every Pokemon would be spotted and described before they've been discovered. That's how they're discovered, so the details in the books don't contradict anything if there was already a temporal vortex the Pokemon were passing through to reach the present day. And we know with Pokemon existing like Dialga and Celebi that that's perfectly possible. And considering they would likely be able to study data from those Pokemon to implement into the machine, since that would be the logical course for creating such a device, I don't see how they would mistakenly create something that has a completely different function.

If anything, to say it's not a time machine would imply that the Pokemon aren't paradoxes at all, but rather just regional variants that were somehow mistaken as such. Which is just silly.

If you read those magazines you’d see that they’re describing things that are definitely not the pokemon- but it’s obvious there’s a connection based on appearance. It’s hard to explain, go read them yourself to see. The magazines definitely came first.

Well obviously the magazines came first, and the vagueness could be attributed to factors similar to the kinds of things you get out of sasquatch sightings. Especially with the future ones, it would make sense that the mechanical nature of the Pokemon would flabbergast those who first encountered them, making them try to rationalize what they saw in their writing without fully comprehending it.

Except no one ever goes into area zero, and the pokemon don’t get out. Except the researchers (who would have seen these pokemon so up close so as to not mistake them for anything weird) and the titan paradox donphan, who is apparently the first to break out of the walls of area zero. More plausible is that one of the researchers read the magazine and the fabrication machine gave them something matching the description.

It doesn't. The paradox pokemon are exactly that: Paradoxes. They aren't actual pokemon from the ancient past/distant future, but rather, PARADOXICAL past and PARADOXICAL future.

A paradox caused by what? Because I would see them more as paradoxes in that they aren't meant to exist in the current time.

It's never explained, but the paradox pokemon are actually confirmed to NOT be ancestors/descendants of the pokemon they're "related" to.

Perhaps walking wake is meant to be a prehistoric version of the pokémon that died and got revived as suicune.